In enterprise applications today, databases are used to store a high volume of data. More often than not, even in the smallest enterprises, data from various transactions is stored in a number of different databases. The data is generated by a diverse set of different business applications which make organizing and accessing the data quite challenging. Together with the high volume of data and the number of different databases, this makes translating the data into usable information a huge and time consuming task. This costs the very purpose of information—timeliness.
The origins of all this data are transactions. Each transaction sets off a chain event of business processes. For example, one Purchase Order transaction creates a web of business events and more transactions in the originating enterprise's business process. The creation of these business events and transactions continues until the life of the Purchase Order finally comes to an end. The data created by the Purchase Order also has an effect on a destination enterprise in which a corresponding Sales Order transaction is created to process the purchase request from the originating enterprise. Maintaining linkages between these two transactions is not an easy task, especially if they are long-lived.
If an enterprise wishes to know the status of a Purchase Order it placed with a supplier enterprise, it presently takes a physical contact, often a phone call or a facsimile, between persons in each enterprise. Generally, it takes a few days at best before an adequate answer can be provided. This process and the time it takes is an aberration in the age of the Internet. There needs to be a way for a person in the originating enterprise to access the status of the Purchase Order, or other transaction, emanating from the originating enterprise quickly and easily. The person in the originating enterprise should be able to access not only information from the web of business events and other transactions in the originating enterprise, but also from the web of business events and transactions resulting from the Sales order, or other linked transactions, in the supplier enterprise.